A Scroll of Infinite Glory

Chapter 335 Souls Left Untouched by the Blade, Space Leap

Chu Xinggu saw the moment the knife struck and immediately leaped away.

The remaining attackers in the ruins had all been wiped out; regardless of distance, it seemed that a single slash of a blade was all it took for heads to fall.

Chu Xinggu had no confidence in blocking such a blade.

Without the assistance of these assassins, the killing spree was no longer a spree.

So he left immediately, moving extremely fast with superb agility, like a celestial figure grasping a green branch, drifting away indistinctly, merging into the sky.

Guan Luoyang looked up and saw that the figure with the green staff and white clothes seemed to be covered with a layer of cloud light that was difficult to see clearly. The cloud light flashed rapidly like water ripples. Every time the light flashed slightly, Chu Xinggu's true body had already gone several miles away.

If we disregard the means of attack and only consider the speed of movement, Chu Xinggu's escape was even faster than the agility and gait he had previously displayed.

"Such fast movement."

The heavy sword lay horizontally in his hand, and Guan Luoyang's eyes and brows radiated a chilling killing intent. "But since I've seen you, how can you escape my blade?"

He raised his knife and swept it across.

As Chu Xinggu fled, he held the jade bamboo staff in his left hand, its smooth, lustrous surface reflecting the scene behind him.

Although the bamboo cane has a curve and color, the reflected image is slightly distorted.

However, Chu Xinggu's gaze automatically adjusts, allowing him to reconstruct the grand change behind the tiny reflection.

It was grand and magnificent, yet it was transformed in the blink of an eye.

The wind whips up clouds in the sky, creating a vast sea of ​​clouds; on the ground, ruins loom and smoke billows.

The sea of ​​clouds and the smoke and dust were getting closer and closer, until there was almost only a thin line separating them.

A crescent-shaped blade of energy swept across the gap between heaven and earth.

It was as if the clouds and mist between heaven and earth had squeezed out this line of knife marks.

A flash of light, surpassing the clouds and smoke, silently swept behind Chu Xinggu.

Chu Xing moved his arm, and the jade bamboo staff instantly changed position, close to his back, blocking behind him. The crescent-shaped blade light, which was a hundred meters long, hit the jade bamboo staff, paused only slightly, and continued to sweep across his waist.

Bang! ! !

His white robes were torn apart, and Chu Xinggu's body broke off at the waist. A large amount of bright red coolant gushed out from the wound in his waist, revealing an amber-colored alloy skeleton and some blue bionic muscle tissue inside.

The next moment, the two body sections began to disintegrate from the waist down, breaking apart inch by inch and turning into ashes.

The jade bamboo staff fell and stuck diagonally in the ground. A deep white mark appeared on the staff where the blade had struck it, accompanied by a crisp cracking sound.

Chu Xinggu's prosthetic head landed not far from the jade bamboo staff, rolled a few times, and continued to disintegrate.

When only the upper half of his face remained, a long, drawn-out sigh could be faintly heard.

That was the sound of Jiushan.

"After weakening the design so many times, he still managed to turn the tide? Alas, the tide has turned."

Inside the grand hall, as luxurious as a classical palace, amidst the snow and ice.

Chu Xinggu's prosthetic body opened its eyes on the throne.

The words Jiushan had just sighed about still seemed to echo in his ears.

His brows furrowed, and he abruptly rose from his throne, but before he could make his next move, a blade of light flashed across the air in the palace.

The blade flashed across the wine pool, sending all the wine billowing into the air.

The blade flashed up the steps.

The shadows on the side wall faithfully recorded this scene: the figure who had just stood up from the throne had his head severed by a blade of light.

Bright red coolant gushed out, splashing onto the wall. A head flew into the air, its once bright eyes dimmed, then flickered one last time. Some tiny data points deep within the pupils lit up before shattering.

The soul data stored within this prosthetic body has been destroyed by this strike.

In another part of the wasteland, a dusty factory stands with its iron gates locked and covered in rust.

Behind layers of protective gates, inside the room with its cool, silvery-white tones, sat a massive, equally silvery-white iron coffin.

On the surface of the iron coffin, some strange characters resembling seal script were sprayed with red paint.

— "The Judge Changes Fate", "Avoiding Death and Prolonging Life", "The Lesser Realm of the Intermediate State", "North of Yushan", "King Yama Borrows a Horse", "Escape from Impermanence".

The coffin was shrouded in icy mist and darkness when suddenly a pair of blue eyes lit up.

Chu Xinggu's prosthetic body lay in the coffin with its hands folded, breathing in the cold mist, without rushing to get up.

The seal script around the iron coffin is some esoteric talismanic techniques obtained by their organization from studying the legacy of that group of reincarnators from back then.

All of them are used to provide the effect of "concealing one's soul aura and avoiding being pursued by the outside world".

The next moment, a blade of light descended from the sky, severing the iron coffin in two.

The loud crash of steel being shattered echoed out of the factory, attracting the attention of some passersby outside.

In the ruins of the city near the coast, the mist and smoke gradually receded, and Guan Luoyang's figure reappeared.

He held a long sword at an angle, slightly twisting his wrist to turn the blade and adjust its angle.

Using the pull of the aura, Tianhe's magical power was continuously transmitted out, forming streaks of light in every corner of the wasteland continent, successively severing those people's means of survival.

Suddenly, the blade trembled slightly, emitting a pleasant, clear sound.

Guan Luoyang was somewhat surprised and took out the helmet from the game world.

In the northern part of the wasteland, in an art gallery showcasing statues, all sorts of strange and unique artworks are on display.

Examples include a broken-winged angel made from tens of thousands of discarded knives, a Transformer made from tires, and a four-winged dragon with a skeleton made from aluminum cans, scales from the dial of a mechanical watch, and metal chains.

Among the many sculptures, a gray stone statue in the shape of a thinker does not stand out much.

Suddenly, a large hole appeared in the top of the exhibition hall, and a strange man fell down.

He was dressed in combat gear, with a lithe physique, gloves, and boots; only his face was exposed.

However, his face had no skin at all, only a delicate white jade-carved face, directly inlaid on the black alloy head frame. The back of his head also had no bionic skin or hair, only a dull alloy luster and hard lines.

The strange man with white, jade-like features slapped the thinker on the forehead: "Activate!"

"Don't open it, I've been awake for a while."

The thinker blinked, and Chu Xinggu's cold and dejected voice rang out, "Nine Mountains, in about seven seconds, Guan Luoyang's blade will be here again. Just let me wait to die in peace."

"You won't die, come with me."

Jiushan's prosthetic body grabbed the Thinker and flew out through the large hole in the top of the stadium, soaring over the city and heading towards the wilderness.

The thinker did not resist, silently counting down the seconds.

"...5, 4, 3, 2, 1."

He looked up, expecting a flash of light, but saw nothing. "Huh?!"

Of Chu Xinggu's seventeen soul data sets, only this one remains.

Having had his soul annihilated sixteen times in a row, the feeling of the sword intent spreading over him made him unwilling to resist. However, this time, Guan Luoyang's sword light did not come.

He perked up and asked疑惑地问道, "What did you do?"

Jiushan replied, "The situation in the game world was initially at a stalemate. After realizing that your ambush had failed, I immediately committed suicide. With the highest authority in the game world absent, all the intelligent programs gradually shut down, temporarily trapping them in that chaos. I also used the mental connection to attack Guan Luoyang's physical body with the collapsed data sea."

The thinker's ashen face showed several shifts in expression.

"This... your largest piece of soul data committed suicide, so this prosthetic body only has level four psionic energy left? His physical body will catch up soon, how can we resist?"

Chu Xinggu shook his head. "You might as well maintain the stalemate in that game world and hold on there. After all, that's your home turf. The six major regions and the vast ocean can all become your stronghold. Maybe you'll see a turning point."

"You don't understand. If we continue to hold out there, no matter how we change our approach to entangle with them, it's the same as still being tied up inside. No matter what kind of backup plan we use, they might follow the clues and slowly boil me down until I'm dead. But now, I've gained a moment of freedom."

Jiushan's prosthetic body uses his original voice, without any electronic noise mixed in.

His calm tone carried a sense of movement, like an iceberg shifting.

Icebergs, with most of their volume submerged beneath the sea surface, are among the most dangerous things on the ocean, especially when they are moving.

A dead iceberg is not frightening; what is most terrifying on a shipping route is an iceberg that knows the ocean will melt it but continues to advance, causing countless sailors on every route to be filled with fear and unease.

By this time, they had ventured deep into the wilderness and came across a cluster of buildings standing silently in the desolate landscape.

The buildings along the edge are of varying heights, with a few tall buildings having strange shapes, resembling giant jars, and large areas around them showing signs of damage.

Between these buildings is a circular area roughly the size of twenty football fields.

The circular area was covered with countless strips of unknown material, forming a structure that resembled a white umbrella.

It's clear that a significant portion of the materials, some new and some old, were replaced later; nearly a third of them were replaced.

Chu Xinggu asked in surprise, "This is... a warp drive base?"

The name "Leap Base" could be found on any roadside child over six years old, if you had asked them more than fifty years ago, before the Great Cataclysm.

They will all find it familiar.

At that time, the interest in extraterrestrial ecosystems remained high. Everyone knew that there were also habitable places on the moon and Mars, greenhouses transformed by human power, a great achievement worthy of being written into the history books of humankind.

The leap base occupies a crucial position in this great achievement.

The distance between Earth and Mars is at least 50 million kilometers. If we rely on rockets or spacecraft, it would take more than half a year to make a trip there, and we wouldn't be able to carry too many supplies.

When they first discovered a special mineral deposit with huge reserves on Mars, Yan Zhen and his team spent more than a year just traveling between Earth and Mars and bringing back a small number of samples.

The universe is so vast and full of countless variables that no one can say for sure what will happen during a long voyage.

Unless, of course, we skip large stretches of space.

The reason humans were able to establish an ecosystem and conduct large-scale development on Mars was because they made breakthroughs in space travel technology, enabling them to travel directly from Earth to a lunar port.

Then, from the lunar spaceport's jump base, communication, calibration, and resonance are established with the base on Mars, allowing the large spacecraft to undergo seven space jumps, accumulating a total time of no more than thirty-six hours, to reach Mars from the Moon.

A series of fixed jump points were planned between Earth, the Moon, and Mars, and a complete space route was created by human intervention.

Unfortunately, after the moon crashed, several jump stations on Earth were also affected and completely destroyed.

Over fifty years of chaos, ordinary people and small organizations could only drift along with the tide of history.

Even organizations like the United Regime and the Eight Leaves Institute have been unable to find suitable personnel to rebuild the jump base. Or rather, their attention has been forced to be focused on other matters.

Jiushan is different. He operates behind the scenes of the game world and doesn't need to spend too much energy interfering in the wasteland. Relatively speaking, he has more time to research technology than the leaders of the United Government and the Eight Leaves Institute.

Over the years, relying on some data preserved after the cataclysm, he has gradually repaired a warp base on the wasteland continent and has made some progress.

However, he only had partial information, and he himself was not a specialist in space technology. As a result, the repair progress of this jump base remained at around 90%.

Chu Xinggu was also aware of this: "Isn't this warp base unusable?"

"Who says 90% of them are unusable?"

Jiushan said casually, "Actually, when I had repaired it to 20%, I activated it once and told you it couldn't be used. This was in case a great master suddenly appeared one day who could sweep through all of you and capture and interrogate you alive."

Chu Xing was speechless for a moment.

These people on the wasteland continent all prepared various means to protect themselves, and naturally they also imagined that one day they might be defeated by a stronger enemy.

However, it was quite unexpected for Chu Xinggu that Jiu Shan, as one of the world's top figures who had never suffered any major losses since the last century, would assume such a dire situation.

Even when that group of people who weren't native to Earth appeared back then, they didn't possess the overwhelming advantage that Jiushan described.

Chu Xinggu suddenly realized something.

In fact, after learning about the appearance of that group of people from another world more than fifty years ago, Chu Xinggu remained outwardly normal, but sometimes he couldn't help but wonder how powerful the beings behind those people were, whether they would come to Earth again, and what their attitude would be then.

Then, he would subconsciously avoid certain problems, trying to confuse himself with focus, courage, and diligence, so as not to worry unnecessarily.

Instead of constantly worrying about unforeseen future events, it's perfectly normal, and even the right choice, to focus your energy on tangible spiritual practices.

However, Jiushan seemed to completely ignore those issues. So, apart from his cultivation, he did his utmost in every place he could reach, working diligently and without slacking off.

Having just experienced a major setback, Chu Xinggu couldn't help but feel a sense of shame and regret.

He always prided himself on his diligence, and his talent in psychic abilities was indeed exceptional. However, if he had possessed the mindset of truly giving his all earlier, he might have already reached the ninth level of normal psychic abilities. At that time, even facing Guan Luoyang today, he might not have been without the power to put up a fight.

Just as Chu Xinggu was pondering and gradually gaining insight, Jiushan had already adjusted some data.

"etc."

Chu Xinggu recalled something, "Without a jump base on the other end for calibration and response, even if you successfully launch it, we don't know where we'll be sent."

Jiushan nodded and plunged a finger into the forehead of the Thinker statue.

"So I prepared many opportunities for us."

The gates of the buildings at the edge of the circular area open automatically.

Numerous figures emerged from the main entrances of each floor.

They have only three faces: Bai Yu Wu Guan, Chu Xing Gu, and Leopold.

"Leo is no longer needed, but our chances of trial and error are still limited. If your soul data continues to be copied and divided, it can probably only be copied 59 times before it falls to the standard of an ordinary person. If it is divided one more time, it may not be able to maintain a complete mind."

Jiushan seemed to smile, and said with a smile, "So, Xiao Chu, pray."

Chu Xinggu felt his soul data being split and replicated, and muttered, "May the Three Pure Ones, God Gaia, and Lady Luck bless me?"

"No, they are praying to me."

Jiushan said, "I pray that I can take you to a safe place within the limited number of attempts I can make."

The prosthetic bodies floating in the air via levitation devices lit up one by one.

The circular area emitted a general buzzing sound, and a slowly rotating ball of light appeared at its center.

Numerous prosthetic bodies entered one after another.

(End of this chapter)